Critical Path Method – Scheduling the Complex Projects

Critical path management is one of the vital techniques employed to identify and list all the essential tasks that are supposed to be completed in order to finish the project. It’s also called the longest and most complex sequence of steps that must be finished within the required timeframe. In this post, we are going to discuss the steps on how to find the critical path for different types of projects. Let’s take a look.

What is the Critical Path Method?

The critical path method refers to the technique used to identify activities that are important for project completion and their schedule. As it consists of the necessary steps for project completion, it goes without saying that any kind of delay in the critical path will lead to delays in the final project. The main purpose of CPM is to identify the schedule for each task, duration, and task dependencies.

The method was discovered in 1950 when managers needed a project management process that could streamline each task and ensure all activities related to the project were finished as and when required without experiencing cost-related issues.

Why do Organizations need to Implement the Critical Path Method?

As mentioned above, the main purpose of implementing CPM is to plan projects, allocate resources, and schedule individual tasks based on their priorities. Let’s check out a few crucial reasons why every organization (no matter the size and nature) must use CPM for better and more efficient management.

Better Future Planning − You can use CPM to compare your goals with the actual progress. The data you have collected from the current projects play a vital role in optimizing your future projects and streamlining your regular business operations.

Better Resource Management − Resource allocation is often the most challenging aspect of a project. With the help of CPM, managers can prioritize individual tasks, which gives them a clear picture of how they should deploy and allocate resources efficiently.

Better Scheduling − It’s difficult to avoid bottlenecks when you are working on a project without proper planning. These bottlenecks can affect the outcome significantly, which is why scheduling your activities based on their priorities is crucial. CPM also allows you to check whether the tasks run in parallel and contribute to your long-term organizational goals.

Steps for Finding the Critical Path

Make a List of All Activities

You need to break down your project into smaller, manageable tasks that must be completed within a given timeframe to achieve the final objectives.

Suppose your marketing team is creating a blog post about your recently launched product. They have created a list of the tasks to be completed to post the blog on the company’s website without delay. These tasks include adding visuals to the blog, writing the outline, writing the main body, and uploading it. You can list these tasks with the duration for each. Based on this, it will be easier to prioritize them and finish the most urgent ones on priority, followed by the non-critical tasks, such as adding visuals. In the above example, you can add visuals after posting the blog on your website. Editing can also be done after publishing.

Finding Dependencies

Each task is dependent on another task. In the example mentioned above, you can’t write a draft until you have an outline. Or, you can’t add visual elements to the blog until you have the draft ready. You need to adjust your list of tasks based on their dependencies. This is called activity sequence, which is required to design the critical path for the project.

Building the Network Diagram

Once you have prepared a list of the activities with their duration and priorities, the next step is to convert it into a network diagram. Simply put, it’s a flowchart of all the activities listed in chronological order. No need for any special drawings. Create a box for each task and use arrows to show the dependencies. This will help your team understand the right order for completing each task. This is only a rough diagram. You might need to add more elements, especially time-sensitive tasks, to this flowchart later.

Estimating the Duration

As mentioned earlier, an important step in creating a critical path is identifying the duration of each task. There’s no hard and fast rule for that. The best you can do is make an educated guess about how long your team will take to finish each activity. You can use industrial standards too. If you have the records of the past project data, that can be very useful in figuring out the duration of each activity.

Establishing the Critical Path

You have two options for establishing a critical path—do it manually or use an algorithm. For that, you need to list the activities in chronological order with their start and end time. The start time for your activity is the end time of the last activity plus the total duration for the same. The critical path consists of the sequence of all tasks with the longest duration. As soon as you have prepared the critical path, you can create a project schedule accordingly.

Identify the Float

While you may have listed each task with its duration, there’s a chance your projects might not complete according to your goals. So, identifying the float—the flexibility of each task—is critical for each project. This shows how much a task can be delayed without affecting the next task in the sequence or the project. Float determines the unpredictable issues that might crop up when you have started working on a project. Unfortunately, critical paths have no float, meaning there’s no flexibility. Non-critical paths have a positive float and can be delayed if required.

Conclusion

The critical path method became famous shortly after its introduction and has been followed to date. It involves breaking down a complex project into smaller, individual operations, giving managers a clear and better picture of individual tasks and how flexible the project is.